Pavlović Amadeja

Pavlović, Amadeja In the town of Djakovo, Croatia, not far from Osijek, the Ustaša set up a transit camp for Jewish women and children, where many died of starvation or contagious diseases, while awaiting transfer to concentration camps. Amadeja Pavlović, the mother superior of the Sisters of Mercy of the Holy Cross convent in Djakovo, managed to convince the Ustaša to allow her to admit pregnant and sick Jewish women to a special hospital wing of the convent. In this way, she helped save a number of women. The mother superior also helped rescue 11-year-old Zdenka Bienenstock, when she accepted her into the boarding school at the convent. Zdenka lived with her family – parents, Max and Vilma, and sister Vera – in Osijek. After the occupation and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, in April 1941, and the increased anti-Jewish legislation and persecution, her parents decided to have Zdenka baptized to the Catholic faith, unaware that baptism would not protect their child. The priest who baptized her was the one who brought her to the Holy Cross convent. Despite her baptism, the mother superior took a great risk accepting young Zdenka into the convent, as helping Jews was a crime punishable by death. Zdenka lived at the school under an assumed name, as a Bosnian refugee, and was not allowed outside the walls of the convent. When German soldiers stopped at the convent, Mother Amadeja had Zdenka hidden in a separate room. In 1944, a hospital for wounded German soldiers was set up in the convent and the school was closed. The homeless girls were transferred elsewhere, but remained under the care of the nuns. In her letter to Yad Vashem Zdenka (later Grünbaum) wrote, “I lived as a Catholic child …I was also kept safe, sheltered, fed, clothed, and educated during the whole war, and the convent or Mother Amadeja were never compensated for doing their humane and Christian duty under most trying and dangerous conditions.” In May 1945, Yugoslavia was liberated; the convent wasforbidden to teach school under Communist rule, and Zdenka left. She discovered that her family members had been murdered and she had no place to go. She returned to Osijek where she lived with various families, until she moved to Israel in 1949, and later to the United States. On June 29, 2008, Yad Vashem recognized Amadeja Pavlović as Righteous Among the Nations